by Steven Gledhill for FREEdom from MEdom Project
I was bothered by a post on Facebook that read, “No pastor can support same sex marriage, homosexuality, transgender, abortion and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
No one preaching Jesus can support lying, cheating, gossip, jealousy, and resentment either. Being someone in the behavioral health profession, I will say that the church (by church I mean the body of Christ) has been challenged to love those who are gay, transgender, and have aborted the unborn. It is a challenge as a Christian counselor to persuade sinners that Jesus loves them when they have been condemned for their sin by other sinners calling themselves Christians doing what Jesus never did. The thief on the cross next to Jesus, the woman caught in adultery, and so many others, may or may not have been repentant in the moment, but were completely caught up in the compassionate attraction that is the generous love of Jesus. We are drawn to repentance by God’s love, modeled by His Son. It’s in this model of grace that we extend the same compassion to sinners crossing our paths.
Lots of Christians, including myself, fall prey to judging someone first is all I am saying. It’s not for you or I to do that. We need to model grace rather than struggle with condemning someone else’s sin. If I continue to be deceptive with subtle lies that are 90% true, resent someone because I covet what they have while deceiving myself in the process, ignore that I am envious of someone else’s success and then gossip about it, I am just as much continuing to walk in sin as anyone whose sin appears to be more obvious than mine. If I entertain lust, greed, and selfish ambition; if I find myself needing to be validated as right, outside of an attitude of repentance, because I refuse to recognize my own pride, I am just as challenged as a forgiven sinner to resist temptation.
As someone who calls himself a believer, a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ, how am I different? How am I be identified by my fellow brothers and sisters in faith? Would they recognize me as someone who is family to them, having relationship with Jesus in common with them? How am I identified by those who I see everyday that do not share my values pertaining to faith in relationship with God?
“Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” John 13:35 (NLT)
An atheist is a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God. An agnostic is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
How would the atheist or the agnostic identify or recognize as someone who represents what they have identified to be the characteristics of Jesus, even if they believe him to be a fictional character? How does my life and look reflect something about God or Jesus that they would find attractive?
I am guilty of giving into my passions as a believer on social media, engaging in the debate over social injustice as it has fostered the powerful wave of social unrest. I am guilty of having the need for validation in my quest to prove that I am right on so many given topics in these perilous times that we refer to as insanity in the year that is 2020. So many Christian brothers and sisters are divided along racial lines as the secular world looks on and shrugs its collective shoulders in disgust.
Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. Ephesians 4:2-3 (NLT)
Some five years ago, I worked as a counselor in a prison setting, where as a Caucasian man, I was in the minority in a population that was predominantly Afircan American. What I found to be quite incredible was how many of the men found Jesus or returned to a relationship with Jesus in the prison environment. Men were desperate for freedom in their experience. Fellow inmates that had an authentic relationship with God definitely trended toward having attitudes that were both compassionate and empathic, but also reflected a heart and mindset that appeared to be joyful and free. Men who admittedly would have thought to kill one another on the street had befriended each other and came to love one another. They were brought together in the common affliction that comes with being in prison, but also found themselves united in their quest to be free; not only upon their release, but even in the midst of their present experience.
Not every man was joined together in the setting that was prison. A number of them held onto to resentment that would fuel jealousy, bitterness, and hate. What I often found was that embittered inmates were jealous of their brothers in chains, so to speak, because they saw in those men attitudes that were loving and at peace. Some hated those guys for it. As a counselor, I encouraged the men holding onto their anger and rage to reserve their contempt for those men at peace, and seek to engage with them in order to better understand how they found what they found, and have what they have.
The reality for us living in a society of social injustice is that who we are as a community of Christian brothers and sisters has become divided by how we measure oppression, and therefore degrade the love we have for each other as brothers and sisters in the family of God. As nations and cities have become fragmented, so has the church of Jesus Christ.
And the world is watching.
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. James 4:1-3 (NLT)
We tear each other apart on social media. What is tragically sad about that is that we are so caught up in our words, with a name in front of it. We don’t even know most of the people we are fighting with. If we ran into the same people in a social setting, we would be inviting toward one another, with no idea that we were just killing each other on Facebook. It’s kind of like those inmates that are friends in a setting that is engaging that way, but who would have thought to kill one another on the street. Social media is the street where social injustice and oppression is full of names without sight of the lives of the people those names belong to.
This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Ephesians 4:13-14 (NLT)
How are we as the people of God different? How would others that do not know Jesus distinguish us who do as any different? How is my life, and what I possess in relationship with God attractive, even compelling, to the person who does not believe and is outside of the reality and experience that is a life in relationship? Instead of simply being angry with me, why would someone want what I have?
Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. Ephesians 4:15-16 (NLT)
As Christians in relationship with Jesus, supposedly united in an attitude of grace and love, we are indeed a liberated people of favor and privilege. How will anyone know the difference when they see you; when they see me?
Does my life model God’s mercy and grace?
The world is watching.
